Footnotes: Sand Box
by Bibliotecaria.D
Summary: Come play in the sand box.  Pt.4: Ratchet's fearsome reputation...a little differently.  Pt. 5: Astrotrain doesn't want to talk about it.  Pt.6: Skywarp hits on Optimus Prime. Badly.  Pt.7: Wheeljack is a Constructicon fetish.
1. Chapter 1

_Come play in the sand box._ (Thundercracker would rather fly.)

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><p><strong>Title: <strong>Clipped Wings

**Warnings: **Aaaaaangst.

**Rating: ** G

**Continuity: **G1, _Footnotes_ AU

**Characters: **Thundercracker

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **"**Pushed again**(Die Toten Hosen)"

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><p>Later, after the requisite screaming matches and ignored orders and people getting stuck in the launch tower(1), the Decepticon base seemed eerily quiet. It might have had something to do with the quiet after a storm, as if the prior cacophony made whatever followed it seem quieter by comparison. It probably had more to do with taking three-fourths of the crew out and shoving them in the space bridge. That took away a good nine-tenths of the normal noise level(2).<p>

It was quiet. Too quiet. There weren't a lot of Decepticons left on Earth get into brawls or – Primus forbid! – actual conversations with. Most of those left behind were covering everyone else's duty-shifts, and even if they were currently fighting the Autobots, that didn't meant they could take a vacation.

Which left the remaining Decepticons with far too much time by themselves. Some took up knitting(3). Others confined their activities to quarters, not necessarily their own. But they were quiet about it, leaving the others in peace.

It was _maddening_.

Thundercracker had settled himself in one of the more popular common rooms, vaguely hoping in the back of his processor that _somebody_ was around. Even the knitted Thing was alone today, however, its slavish devotee having apparently abandoned it for a duty-shift. Which left the jet sitting in an empty common room with nothing but his thoughts for company. Exactly what he _hadn't_ wanted to happen, thank you very much. He'd had too much time to think, lately.

Decepticons who thought too much got into trouble. He let his head fall back, staring up at the ceiling as if seeking answers from the orderly tiles. His air intakes acted as blinders on either side, and all he could see was square upon square, perfectly measured and cut. Precision only a machine could accomplish, assembled without error. This Earth planet was utter chaos outside, there were crazy 'bots running around inside, but at least he could depend on the rigid structure of the base itself to remind him that things hadn't always been so -

- someone had drawn a caricature of Optimus Prime on the ceiling. Or maybe it was Motormaster. It was hard to tell, what with the way it was, umm…having its way with the highway overpass. The overpass was well-drawn. The semi-truck was rather exaggerated.

He thought, anyway.

Thundercracker sighed air through his systems, pushing stale emissions and thoughts out in one heave, and lifted his head again. There was no escaping this place. Worse, there was no escaping the reality of his situation.

He liked to fool himself into thinking it hadn't always been like this. Before Earth, things hadn't been so disorderly. Okay, yeah, it had been disorderly, but not in that ridiculously over-the-top way humans seemed to infect everything with. But, really, that wasn't true. Maybe it hadn't been so obvious, but that was a matter of scale and confinement. The weird and ridiculous hadn't been crammed into an underwater base to _really_ be unavoidably crazy. Waging war on Cybertron had allowed Thundercracker to…overlook the strangeness.

The Stunticons wouldn't have even been noticeable on Cybertron, where flyers and ground-pounders were compartmentalized. Their special kind of weird would have been kept separate until battle, when everything went to the smelter anyway. A touch of crazy in the mix would have gone unremarked when passing in the halls in Darkmount. Who cared what a ground-pounder was like when a mech saw him once a vorn?

The closest companions a flyer had were fellow flyers. Thundercracker had belonged in those ranks. He hadn't precisely been _happy_ with what was happening, but belonging to the crowd had made it easier to accept orders and the Cause and whatever slag the else got passed through the ranks. It was hard to be politically different in Cybertron's skies. There was no place for deep thought when flying or fighting. Thundercracker had questioned the future, but theoretical questions were nothing when fighting Autobot guerilla strikes over energon stores they all needed to survive.

The dead-end war on Cybertron had been uncomfortable, but orderly. He knew what was going on. There was no pressure to think, only routine in the same rut of guard duty and the occasional shriek as Starscream ordered them into a lightning strike on an Autobot position. Always the company of other flyers gathered around him, fitting into his place among the ranks, had covered his thoughts and fears and doubts with ideology and boredom.

Then came Earth, and this tiny underwater base. Shutting flyers underwater; whose bright idea had _that_ been? Everyone knew it wasn't wise to shut flyers down. It limited their options, tweaked their sensors, and eventually it wore on their minds. Astrotrain and Blitzwing got into violent fights until Megatron sent them up into orbit. Blast Off and Vortex got so bad the Combaticons were able get their own base. Dirge, Thrust, and Ramjet spiraled closer, moving as one and never leaving each other alone. They grew more silent in their depressive phases and more dangerous during their manic ones.

Skywarp, Starscream, and Thundercracker were a placed trine, not a made one, and they pulled apart instead of gluing together. Their personalities grated on each other, too different to tolerate outside of combat. Confining them underwater was enough to make Hook twitch nervously(4). It made Starscream lash out like a cornered turbofox: desperation and wily cunning in one. Skywarp twisted in on himself, picking on his victims' minds and bodies until even those who hadn't gotten caught in a malicious prank were walkingwounded afterward. Thundercracker…

Thundercracker learned. Exposure and confinement forced him into the company of different viewpoints, and he found himself unexpectedly interested. He was surrounded by wildly-varied Decepticon minds wandering the halls and striking out against one another. Grounders brushed shoulders with him, leered at his wings, and sneered at his fighting style. They fed his fears and doubts in a situation where every what-if question he'd ever about the Decepticon Cause was starting to come into play. The old ways of fighting this war were no longer valid, and there were other races in the mix. Where was the honor in killing the humans? What was the point of destroying Earth? Mental exercises became real life, and Thundercracker didn't have the security of the ranks to hide in any more. The company was as uncertain as his questions: crazy Stunticons and the morality of the Decepticon cause; Soundwave's midgets and the honor in fighting a dead-end war; the Combaticons' past political views and conquest on other worlds.

He learned, and it smothered him as surely as the tons of ocean water surrounding him.

Starscream had banished him here, leaving him behind on Earth instead of taking him to Cybertron. It was punishment for an impudent question. Impudent or merely impulsively asking out loud what Starscream didn't want to hear? The unspoken rules dictate that Thundercracker conform or be punished, and the punishments edged harsher each time he refused to be pushed along by old momentum. Skywarp liked to pick apart his behavior, nudging at doubts and ridiculing him until even Thundercracker's notoriously mild temper snapped. Starscream just smacked him with rank and doubled his duty shifts until Thundercracker stopped asking difficult questions. Or trapped him on a dirtball planet instead of taking him back home, where things made sense.

Although that was a fantasy, like blinding himself to everything but the ceiling tiles. There were contradictions and stupid caricatures on Cybertron, too. The quandaries surrounding the war didn't disappear because he didn't want to see them. The other Decepticons didn't go away because he wasn't isolated among them anymore. Life wasn't that easy.

He'd almost tried, anyway. Thundercracker had almost broken, almost apologized to Starscream and humbly requested to be included on the mission(5). He hadn't, however. He'd held onto dignity like a lifeline, and stayed, and now he was one of the very few Decepticons rattling around on Earth like metal beads in a tin can: bouncing off each other sometimes, but mostly just passing without touching in the halls.

Without the others there staring at him, the situation shifted. Trapped in with him, trapping him, the other Decepticons had applied pressure on his fears. They'd snapped the heads off sprouting doubts and weeded out his questions. Without their crowding, watching pressure, Thundercracker became a hothouse of repressed thought suddenly bursting at the seams. The chaos was still there. Cybertron had an underpinning of madness that wasn't as visible as Earth's writhing surface, but was there nevertheless. He didn't want to see it, but once revealed, there was nowhere to turn his optics where it didn't grin back at him. Earth pushed them all, but only more obviously than before. They thought, and reacted, as they always had. It just brought out the worst, confining them in such a small, horrid location. This planet didn't allow them the freedom to not see the results.

Some Decepticons twined together. Skywarp twisted. Starscream pulled. Megatron…destroyed.

No escaping this place, these doubts, and the Decepticons. He'd be one more headcase among the flyers, only noticeable in close quarters, to hide in the sky and let loose on battlefield. Thundercracker just had to learn to live with it.

Live with badly-drawn Autobots-maybe-Decepticons doing obscene things to road structures, and lousy bases where the only company was thought and silent questions. And the pink knitted Thing, of course.

Cybertron's sky seemed very far away.

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**Footnotes**

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><p>(1) Megatron and Prime, Starscream, and the Insecticons, respectively. The solution to each problem, oddly enough, involved hitting a wall really hard with someone's head.<p>

(2)Starscream hadn't stayed behind, duh. That was 50% of the noise level right there.

(3)Brawl. He had read somewhere about something called a 'tank cozy,' and, well, yeah. The…Thing…was turning out suspiciously frilly. Also – pink. But nobody was going to say anything. Possibly because they couldn't stop laughing long enough, but still.

(4)Some days, he hated his job. Being responsible for the mental health of a bunch of flyers stuck in an underwater base? He was good, but he wasn't _that_ good!

(5)Even if the mission had been more of that insanity he expected as a matter of course here on Earth. Seriously, a cease-fire between the factions in order to repel an invasion of hostile sand?


	2. Theory and Practice

_Come play in the sand box._ (Wheeljack makes his own fun.)

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><p><strong>Title: <strong>Theory and Practice

**Warnings: **Mad science!

**Rating: ** G

**Continuity: **G1, _Footnotes_ AU

**Characters: **Wheeljack

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_"I could do with a little help here" _

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><p>Wheeljack had a theory.<p>

Now, the recommended procedure when a scientist had a theory was to test a scale model. This might have even been the standard procedure. However, the war had axed test budgets and standards in one go. Nowadays, if there were resources for preliminary experiments, caution was chucked out the door in favor of investing everything into actual tests instead. Who knew when the Decepticons would attack next? It was all or nothing in budgets and science alike, these days.

Thus, Wheeljack had a theory, and he immediately put that theory to the test. Do not pass Go, do not collect 200 credits. Think, compose hypothesis, and begin building device.

His theory was based on past events, as reflected upon from a perspective today.

Subject: himself.

Goal: not exploding.

Test: building something.

No, that was too broad a test. Rewind back to his thought processes going into this experiment. It wasn't so much that he minded exploding. It happened. Except that it was happening _far too often_. Even devices that seemed completely benign in their harmlessness — how could hydrogen dioxide _explode?_(1) - exploded. It baffled him.

Wheeljack's successful inventions were the stuff of legends. They had also all been built by him alone. No other Autobots had been involved.

Admittedly, no one else had witnessed his successes. The days of science publications and conventions were long gone. But neither had there been the spectacular explosions that characterized his inventions created in conjunction with Skyfire, Perceptor, Ratchet, or even Huffer or Grapple. On Cybertron, Wheeljack had been part of a thriving company. He'd been famous for being on the cutting edge of engineering innovation. He'd been respected. When he'd joined the Autobots, the Decepticons had _feared_ him.

Nowadays, Wheeljack wasn't feared. Yes, the humans had strict limitations on what cities he could approach(2), but he was the laughingstock of the Autobots. The Decepticons ducked when they saw him coming, but that wasn't fear – it was common sense.

Every one of his past inventions had been celebrated as brilliant successes. By himself, he could still put together devices that the humans marveled at and even Ratchet grudgingly admitted were worth the possible damage.

However, add another Autobot to the lab and he could bid the day goodbye. He'd end up in medbay, blackened and slumped in defeat, with whatever he'd been working on scattered in pieces. It did not make _sense_. Autobots were all about cooperating with each other. It just so happened that Wheeljack's cooperation tended to explode.

So. Back to his experiment. He was the test subject. The goal was to not explode.

Because Wheeljack had theory.

Hypothesis: working in conjunction with other Autobots resulted in failure.

Evidence: Past inventions that were now commonly used. Past respect, and a towering reputation among scientists, especially engineers. He used to get _fan mail_ from engineers. Present day evidence: the occasional experiment he conducted alone resulted in solid findings. The machines he constructed alone were dismissed as yet more of his crazy gonna-explode inventions, but those were the ones that worked. In his memory, not a single one of the inventions he'd made with the help of another Autobot worked the way it was supposed to.

Test: Make something. By himself. Then widen the test.

He'd been at a loss as to how to properly widen the test for this hypothesis, but the war had taught him to dive into work when the opportunity presented itself. It hadn't taught him much about that opportunity being created by sentient sand invading Cybertron(3), but Wheeljack could learn fast. The week of the sand invasion had turned out to be ideal for testing.

Optimus Prime and Megatron had hammered out a temporary cease-fire agreement in order to jointly deal with the invading sand, and half the Cybertronians on Earth had gladly taken the excuse to flee back home. Wheeljack had offered his expertise, of course, but one of Megatron's first terms in the cease-fire - via Starscream and Soundwave's insistence, apparently - had been his exclusion from the mission. Prowl had agreed without quibble. He'd seemed somewhat relieved, in fact, possibly because Wheeljack, even on a good day, was unpredictable. And explosive. Jazz had laughed himself off a chair.

Wheeljack hadn't thought it funny at all, but it had presented a nigh-unheard of opportunity to have the lab all to himself. All the other scientists were off working on the crisis. A perfect time to pin down where his unpredictable reputation sprang from, no? He buckled down to his testing with a will.

When life gave Wheeljack lemons, he made over-powered boosters to shoot them through the stratosphere at supersonic speeds.

By day three of the week, Sideswipe was still staggering, and his optics had a peculiar shine to them. Wheeljack hadn't been able to track down Powerglide, but Sideswipe volunteered twice more _just_ _in case the first time was a fluke, Wheeljack - come oooooon, please?_

Sunstreaker, oddly, merely marched into his laboratory the third day, plunked a handful of paint cans and a polishing set on the first level surface he saw, and beat a hasty retreat to the door. That was a strange reaction to experimenting on Sideswipe. Wheeljack didn't know what to think about that. He assumed it was hint, but he didn't have a golden paint job. He had his own polishing set…somewhere. Okay, so he wasn't nearly as fanatic about his appearance as Sunstreaker, but…really? Did he look that bad?

Since the fuel sediment was settling anyway, he spent some time tweaking paint formulas until it could pass through the cartridge feeder in one of Ironhide's older model nitrogen guns. A faster paint applicator was a practical thing to make for Ratchet. A nice side benefit was that the new paint formula was both quicker to dry and noticeably shinier than before(4).

Secondary proof for the test: even working with material as volatile as liquid paint pressurized into a cartridge, nothing exploded. He got a smear of yellow on his hands which wiped right off.

By day five, Wheeljack had a new reactor in the boosters - but no test subject. Sideswipe had been disqualified due to an inappropriate base frame. Arms were meant to stay attached, after all, and that wasn't likely to happen at the projected speeds. Wheeljack predicted the booster would reach supersonic speeds, and Sideswipe had begged to try anyway. But the point was to get through the experiment _without_ an explosion.

Powerglide was, according to rumor as told by Blaster, in hiding. The Aerialbots were off playing spotters in a serious game of catch-the-sand with every other flyer, Decepticon or Autobot. That left Wheeljack needing help of the flying variety, and that was in short supply among the Autobots left on Earth.

Well. In for a credit, in for the budget. Theory went, working with _Autobots_ resulted in failure…and he did need to widen the test.

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**Footnotes**

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><p>(1)Spike had once said, only half as a joke, "You could make muffin batter explode!" Out of morbid humor, Jazz had pasted a recipe entitled '<em>Danger: Bran Muffin Explosives. May contain nuts andor TNT.'_ on his laboratory door the next day. Wheeljack had, after some research, built a human-sized oven and purchased bran muffin-in-a-box dry mix (nuts optional) from a local bakery. It required two cups of water and an egg. He hadn't even turned the oven on when Perceptor walked in — and the mixing bowl erupted in a fountain of batter.

(2)Utah banished him outright. California banned him from approaching within 300 miles of the San Andreas Faultline. Oddly enough, New York City never noticed or cared when he was in town.

(3)Cosmic, sentient _sand._ And the other Autobots thought he was strange? He'd never thought of creating tiny nano-beings that burrowed into circuitry and gorged on electric current and coolant, then solidified in a mech's joints until the dust-storm swarm's feeding frenzy was sated. Cybertron had been incapacitated by the time Shockwave's distress call reached Earth.

(4)Wheeljack left it on a table and forgot about it, but the next time he left the lab he nearly tripped on the polishing kit. It had been taken apart and set up against the door in a configuration that puzzled him immensely. The kit box now featured a lit candle, a picture of Wheeljack, and one of Sunstreaker's etching stylus. It acquired a signed 'Thank You' note from Tracks later that day.


	3. Practical Applications

_Come play in the sand box._ (Swindle happens to the best of us.)

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><p><strong>Title: <strong>Practical Applications

**Warnings: **Swindle happens to the best of us.

**Rating: ** PG for implication

**Continuity: **G1, _Footnotes_ AU

**Characters: **Thundercracker, Swindle

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_"Always in history, it is the pioneers who suffer for ultimate victory."_

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><p>Swindle was looking for someone. Someone fast, but not <em>just<em> fast. Someone fast and shaped right for the customer's specifications. A flyer, but he was open as to who. Not just anyone, but Swindle would only know exactly who when he saw - ah! Perfect.

"Thundercracker!"

Swindle's smile was greasy enough to power McDonalds. The jet he turned it on froze in mid-step, half-in and half-out into the hall, perhaps out of fear of sliding around in the grease. Alarmed red optics glanced back over a wing into the empty room, then more desperately down the halls as if hoping someone would appear out of thin air save him. Well, this was a jet who flew with Skywarp. Sometimes help really did appear out of nowhere for him.

His alarm seemed to grow upon realizing that Skywarp was away on Cybertron. It was more emotion than normal from the thoughtful jet, which was what Swindle was counting on. Thundercracker had been shut up in the base for days. He'd fragged Starscream off but good, and the temperamental Air Commander had rearranged the schedule so he'd been pulling communication duty ever since. Days underwater? No sky? No flying?

Swindle knew a mark when he saw one.

"Yeah?" the jet ventured, wary as a human sticking a finger into a bear trap.

"Thundercracker, you're just the mech I'm looking for!" Swindle oozed, piling on the shmooze to buy time as he ever-so-casually sauntered those vital few meters closer. Close enough to tackle and pin if the mark tried to run, basically. "Have I got a job for you!"

"No, you don't," Thundercracker corrected, not-so-stupidly edging back out of tackling range. "Go pick on someone dumb enough not to know better."

"You'll love it." Two steps forward and an extra layer of grease piled on the deal with a corny wink. "Lots of flying."

Justifiably skittish, the jet put his back to the wall and eyed the end of the corridor. "Still not that dumb." The control room lay that way. Technically, it was safer ground because surely someone else was on duty and would help him pry Swindle off his leg if it came to that - but it was also a dead end. Getting trapped in a small room by a conmech and buttered into submission was not all that uncommon, unfortunately. Starscream still periodically ranted about the Halloween candy stuck to the inside of his wheel wells. He smelled like candy corn, too.

So, control room: salvation or doom? Hmm.

Swindle beamed at him from the other direction, verbally coating everything in a film of grease. "It'll be great! Good payback for very little effort. Whaddya say?"

Stupid Thundercracker, he actually tried to bargain. He knew it was a mistake as soon as he opened his mouth, but there was just something about Swindle's sales-talk that made a mech start to think he could talk his way free(1). "Look, Ramjet flies, too. He's on patrol over Norway right now, but he'll be back before the end of the shift - "

"The Constructicons specified you." Or Ramjet, but Swindle wasn't going to mention that. Ramjet had been scheduled for long-range patrols every day in the week and a half since most of the Decepticons on Earth had taken the space bridge back to Cybertron to fight the invading, er, sand(2). Starscream's strict limitations on Thundercracker's flight time made him a much easier mark than Ramjet would be. Flyers got grabby when it came to flight slots on this planet. Something about being trapped under all the water pressure of an ocean, Swindle supposed. "It's a paying job, 'Cracker. What's not to like?"

"You calling me 'Cracker'," the jet said sharply, and Swindle made a mental note. Take the sky away for a few days, and Thundercracker was touchy as Breakdown in the spotlight. "I don't need money."

Swindle pasted on his sliest grin. "Who said anything about credits?" Blue wings twitched even as the jet took another cautious step away. Oh, that'd gotten his interest. The sly grin took on a hint of hush-hush, confidential information, and the wings twitched again, this time almost involuntarily toward the Combaticon. Thundercracker might act the aloof warrior, but he knew gossip when he saw it. _Gotcha. Heeere, Seeker Seeker Seeker. Fishing for victims is my favorite sport._ "Way I was told," Swindle threw out, baiting the hook with a tasty tidbit of information, "there might just be a Constructicon orgy in store for whomever takes the job."

And look at those optics pop wide. Thundercracker actually _sputtered_, dignity slipping into a flabbergasted gape. "Wh-what?"

The little Jeep Decepticon waved a hand carelessly, taking the opportunity to shorten the distance between them under the cover of the gesture. "Oh, there's some credits, but they're being offered by the customer, and it's really more of a token." Which would be pocketed by Swindle as a finder's fee, in any case, so Thundercracker wouldn't see anything. "The Constructicons are far more interested in the results than the job itself. And when I say interested," his smirk slid from sly into full-on implication, "I don't mean intellectually. I mean **hands-on** interested. Their hands. All over. And they are **very** interested in the post-job examination." As in, he'd actually thought that Hook was going to proposition him - through the vid-screen, all the way from Cybertron - if he'd just manage to find a suitable 'bot for this customer. The Constructicons had gotten the customer's message, drooled over the designs for a while, and fallen over themselves to contact Swindle.

His job was the best. "Really interested, Thundercracker," Swindle purred. By now he was in the jet's personal space, leaning in and speaking in a sultry tone he usually reserved for egotistical rulers of minor, oil-rich countries with lots of money to blow on large guns that nobody in their right mind actually needed. "Really…" he breathed, "**really**…interested."

Thundercracker swallowed audibly, trying to reset his vocalizer and failing. His optical lenses were blown wide in the dim light of the hall. Everyone knew repair mechs knew a mech's frame in and out. Knew it and exploited it when it came to spite and getting even, but for those rare 'bots who got an invitation into the berth, well…there were rumors.

Legends, truth be told, in the case of a few 'bots(3).

The Constructicons? Not quite legendary, but, hey, Swindle wasn't just doing this for the commission fee. Some customers — and fantasties - were worth the effort of a freebie.

It was worth a little effort to set up the deal. The results would certainly be sweet enough. Thundercracker was a fine enough mech to look at, standing there with his mind thoroughly occupied elsewhere, but picturing him writhing under six sets of skilled repairmechs' hands? Mmm. Yeah, worth some effort on Swindle's end.

_Tug and set the hook._ He leaned back suddenly, shrugging his shoulders and showing his palms. "Think of it as having the entire repairbay owing you a favor or six, 'Crack — ah, Thundercracker."

The Seeker gulped again, throat crackling as systems rebooted. "What's…the job?"

He twirled a finger, other hand nudging the Seeker's arm to make sure he was paying attention. Thundercracker automatically stepped away. "You get to fly in circles," Swindle said evasively, Definitely Not crowding the jet as he widened the twirl of his finger to include his whole hand. His hand gestured, indicating the size of the circles and incidentally brushing Thundercracker with his hand. So of course the jet turned aside and stepped back again. Oh, and look at that, they were standing beside each other! How convenient.

"Circles?"

"It's been cleared with all the human governments, even," the Combaticon said, slickly turning the circular motion of his hand into guiding the larger Decepticon back down the hall and, coincidentally, further away from the sanctuary of the control room. "The Constructicons want you to use some experimental boosters. They'll be installed by someone here on Earth, and then you get to do some speed tests by flying in circles." Really big circles, if he understood right. There had been details more technical than he was used to seeing outside of cannons the size of and weight of a gestalt, but circles. Planet-sized circles. Orbital routes. "Flight time. Won't that be nice?"

"Nice…" Thundercracker shook his head, abruptly snapping back to full attention. "If it were that simple, you'd get Ramjet to do it. Who's doing the installation?" He looked at the hand on his arm and pulled away. Swindle let go with a guileless _Who, me?_ gaze as the blue jet glared down at him. "The Constructicons are on Cybertron. What **exactly** is so experimental about these boosters?" His glare sharpened, mind focusing on the fine print Swindle had slimed over. "Wait, you said 'the customer.' Who's the customer?"

"Oh, you know," Swindle said vaguely.

Suspicion didn't just creep into Thundercracker's thoughts; it staged a parade and took over. "Who hired you to con me, Swindle?"

"Con? You? It's a job, Thundercracker. Fair and square. Nothing Blast Off wouldn't do if he were here!" The attempt at reassurance fell flat. Cue nervous laughter. These were the kind of details that killed a deal. "We do have a treaty on, you know," the salesmech laughed, trying to brush it all off, but by now Thundercracker was backing him down the hall one slow, threatening step at a time.

Not quite how he'd planned on getting the jet to come with him, but it worked. Riiiiiiiight up until Thundercracker made a grab for him, but he didn't seem that pissed. Yet, anyway.

"An Autobot." Thundercracker's voice flattened, deep and monotone. "An Autobot experiment."

"…maybe." Commit to nothing. Just keep sidling back and back, and my, couldn't Thundercracker loom when he was angry.

"An **Autobot**."

"The Constructicons looked over the preliminary designs," he offered, then realized he hadn't helped the situation any when the jet's optics flared a furious crimson. "Yes, alright! An Autobot!"

"All the Autobot scientists are on Cybertron," Thundercracker rumbled. Swindle chuckled, grin too wide and ingratiating to be real. "All of them except that fragged-up walking disaster with the light-up headfins. Tell me, Swindle," and Swindle would be insulted by how his name was spat out except that he was more impressed by how the normally mild-tempered jet transformed into this viciously snarling 'bot stalking down the hall after him, "did you just try to sell me out to **Wheeljack?**"

"Well…" Almost there, almost there, just another meter or so. Swindle stopped as one of Thundercracker's hands clenched into a fist. Best not to be a moving target at the moment. "What can I say? He made us a good offer."

The other Combaticons didn't even give that a chance to sink in before descending on the jet like a wave of profit.

Swindle watched Brawl and Onslaught subdue the Seeker with a smirk as Vortex got the statis cuffs ready. "Don't worry, Thundercracker. Hook said Scrapper gives you an 85% chance at not exploding in mid-air." Oddly, that bit of reassurance failed to stop Thundercracker's struggles. At least the blue Seeker had enough dignity not to lower himself to yelling insults. Dealing with Thundercracker was such a pleasant change from Starscream. His audios were still ringing from Halloween.

Vortex moved in with the cuffs, but Swindle shifted around so that the glowering jet could still see him. "From the way Mixmaster was rhapsodizing in the background over the fuel mixture Wheeljack's using, if you do explode, it'll be epic."

Onslaught snorted. "The humans will note this day in history."

"We'll find a way to memorialize your ashes," Brawl grunted, and Swindle shot them an amused look.

"Now, now. I doubt it'll come to that. The Constructicons are extremely interested in getting him back in one piece." His smile widened, fast-food greased and used-car salesman satisfied. "Or at least in reassembling the pieces afterward."

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**Footnotes**

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><p>(1) Or gnaw a leg off to get out of the trap. It was like arguing with a guy selling tickets to Hell: a mech didn't realize until he was actually in the handbasket that refusal probably would have been the better option.<p>

(2)Yeah, Swindle found that weird, too. He'd been the one who'd had to explain an invasion of sand to his human contacts, after all. Most of the weird came from simplifying 'techno-silicon parasitic nano-lifeform' into 'sand' because of their limited intellects, but still - _sand?_

(3)That Autobot medic with the red chevron could probably walk through a battlefield without more than a few potshots taken at him, just out of sheer hope. The war couldn't last forever, after all.


	4. London Bridge

_Come play in the sandbox. _(Falling down, falling down.)

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><p><strong>Title: <strong>London Bridge

**Warnings: **Ratchet sees things a little differently than commonly thought. Rewriting a fearsome reputation, with a twist on how exactly it came about.

**Rating: ** G

**Continuity: **G1**, **_Footnotes_ AU

**Characters: **Ratchet, Decepticon and Autobot flyers

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_"__Collapse," and annoyance at the fanon interpretation of Ratchet as an__ abusive slagger who doesn't respect his patients or his tools._

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

* * *

><p>Ratchet was a reasonable mech. He'd been promoted through the ranks steadily, building a stable reputation of being able to handle anything. He'd been made Chief Medical Officer because of a combination of experience and competence, layered over with toughness developed out of the natural stubbornness he'd been created with. And he needed every iota of that stubbornness to be a medic in the midst of war.<p>

War did a lot of things to a mech, but it would not turn this medic into a killer. He'd gone toe-to-toe with Prowl and Ironhide over that more than once, flinging his ethics into battle beside more ruthless Autobots but holding his moral ground. If the Autobots as whole decided to abandon their ideals, would he follow them over that edge? No. The medbay and a medic's hands could, and would, remain the one place in this civil war where sanctuary meant something.

He'd disable. He'd cripple. He'd fight to the bitter end to save a fellow Autobot – _or any patient_. When it came down to the final blow, he neither aided nor abetted. Ultimately, stripped down to the core, the foe he fought didn't care about faction, and he'd fight just as hard to save a Decepticon from it.

Prowl remained unhappy with his personal choices, but tactics and 'the reasonable solution' often didn't allow for compassion. Medics had to allow for it, and so the realm of the medbay remained safe from logic's tyranny under Ratchet's guardianship. Ironhide was more vocal about his disagreement, but a few well-scheduled 'routine' maintenance checks reduced the red Autobot to grumbling instead of shouting(1). Optimus Prime, of course, had nothing but respect for Ratchet's decisions. The Prime truly believed that freedom was the right of all sentient beings. It was horribly naïve of him, but Ratchet knew what the repression of personal belief could lead to. Even Ironhide and Prowl only objected because they feared Ratchet's personal brand of idealism would eventually get him killed.

Red Alert was another story altogether. Ratchet spent regular intervals yelling back and forth with him through the communications system on the _Ark_. It was _Security Issues_ versus _Medical Ethics_ argued out in the courtroom of a civil war. They engaged in a priority one battle royale that provided questionable entertainment for the other Autobots. Neither side was willing to compromise. They often spent days at a time firing verbal shots across each other's bows in the corridors and retreating in opposite directions. Officer meetings were strategic exercises in sniping from moral high ground into the heavily armed area of security regulations(2).

It wasn't that Ratchet couldn't understand Red Alert's concerns, as overblown as they sometimes seemed. He could understand why Prowl and Ironhide and Jazz and Prime worried, too. The point, however, was that he _could_ understand.

The other Ark officers, by necessity, dealt only in black and white. Jazz, as head of Special Operations, had to be able to hide in the black by pulling it over the white; it became his camouflage. As a tactician, Prowl had to see both sides clearly; logic distanced him from them equally. Ironhide sat firmly in the white and shot big guns at the black. Red Alert set up barricades and patrolled with rigidly controlled paranoia between the lines, just in case black made a move on white. Prime had to offer an open hand to the black while defending the white; he had the seemingly-impossible job of trying to be fair in the midst of war.

Ratchet stayed determinedly in the shades of gray, refusing to let anyone separate the factions that cleanly. In civil war, there were no pure shades: no unsullied white, no untainted black. There were traitors and unwilling participants, civilians and warriors, but no one could divide Cybertron into good and evil. That was an artificial belief as fictional as a gun manufactured for peace. Believing in a good cause didn't make friendly fire a better thing, nor did evil intentions mean there was no kindness between enemy soldiers. The other Autobot officers had to see only black and white, had to believe the lie of perception, or they'd be forced to see the truth of fighting their own kind. For the sake of the other officers who couldn't, Ratchet had to see the grays.

He had to see that some Decepticons enjoyed killing, but that the majority of them actually believed. They really, truly believed that what they fought for was right. They were soldiers, yes, but they were also mechs as devoted in their own way to following Megatron's vision as the Autobots were to following Prime's beliefs. Different societies sprout different rules, wildly diverse ethics, and morals as varied as the mechs who held to them. Culture, even the twisted kind within the ranks of soldiers, was the source and result of the mechs who lived within its bounds. Cybertron had been divided for so long that Decepticons and Autobots had achieved a false dichotomy, unable to see their underlying similarities for the surface differences. So long as those differences met on the field of battle, the only result could be civil war.

There had to be a place where safety could be found. There had to be a neutral zone where similarities were rediscovered, and all the damage of internal combat repaired.

Ratchet had to see it. He had to know it. And, as a result, he made his medbay that place.

He was a reasonable mech, however, and tried not to let his peculiar system of thought spread much beyond close subordinates. Cliffjumper already accused him an average of once a week of collaborating with the Decepticons. It would do Autobot moral on Earth no good if the CMO started talking slag about fundamental beliefs and the philosophy of life. Inside his medbay, it was a different story. It was a quiet, stable resolution he'd made upon promotion, establishing that boundary. Any mech could walk in to his territory and expect to be treated as a patient. It was a small place, but pushing it further than his own hands — or in his case, his own medbay, that small realm within the larger Autobot faction - was more than a reasonable mech could expect. And Ratchet was a reasonable mech.

Reasonable, yes, but not perfect. Ratchet had been pushed a lot over time. It was war; it happened. He'd been verbally and physically attacked, his beliefs as an Autobot and a medic brought under constant fire, but he'd bulled through the worst of what other could do to him with the steadfast belief that what he did was right. It was for the benefit of peace, and the eventual healing of the people of Cybertron.

So to have the cease-fire broken within a medical bay he presided over, Decepticon and Autobot jets brawling with absolutely no respect and no consideration _right in front of him_, as if every time he went under the guns for the sake of their future _didn't matter_…

Well. Ratchet had been a reasonable mech for a very long time. No one could blame him if, just this once, he acted a little unreasonable. A tiny bit of violence, just this once. This time, and only this time, he'd thrown a few tools around the medbay. They were all borrowed from Shockwave, anyway, so he hadn't damaged anything important. He'd raised his voice, but it was completely understandable considering circumstances! A mech, even an Autobot, even a medic, could only be expected to tolerate so much. Even Ratchet had his limits, right?

Given a few days, nobody would remember his tiny snap. The Aerialbots were irrepressible on bad days and boisterous to the point where he wondered if they suffered from short-term memory loss on good days. They'd blank out his short loss of control the minute they walked out the door of the medbay, his orders to not get damaged out of inter-faction stupidity _or else_ forgotten by the time they got to the landing field. The Decepticons were Decepticons. They probably couldn't pick him out of a line-up of Autobots later today, much less remember how he'd described in graphic detail what he'd do to the next flyer who got out of his assigned repair berth without prior approval(3).

Okay, sure, so Thrust had saluted him about 15 times in a row and started tacking '_Sir!'_ onto every sentence. And yeah, Fireflight had actually hidden under his berth instead of laying on it. Skywarp had automatically teleported back into the medbay after the first initial escape attempt by the pack when Ratchet had turned his back, but that was reflex conditioning. He was fairly sure it was left over from being bellowed at by some other medic. A Decepticon medic. Yeah.

The others had straggled back in shamefaced, too, but the Aerialbots had the chain of command making them obey his orders. The Decepticon flyers had clustered tightly by the door until he reached for a welding torch, whereupon they dove for the berths like salvation from the sand(4) could be found there. They'd probably just been humiliated by being caught up in a panicked stampede; herd mentalities were always embarrassing in hindsight. Slingshot had whispered a fervent prayer to Primus in the background while Ratchet worked, but maybe the Aerialbots had discovered religion while on Cybertron. And there might have been some shaking wings here, a whimper or two there, but repairs were sometimes painful and they _were_ in a crisis.

They weren't afraid of him. Ratchet was a reasonable mech with a respectable reputation. One little slip wouldn't collapse that.

They'd get over it. A day – two, tops – and it'd all be forgotten.

Right?

* * *

><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

**Footnotes**

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

><p>(1)Nobody crossed medical personnel. Or rather, they didn't do it more than once. There was nothing quite so alarming as hearing "<em>Oops, sorry about that!"<em> or _"Hmm. No, no, wait, I can fix this. I think."_ during routine maintenance. Ratchet had spent a week fretting during regular maintenance on the Special Ops team, and they had resorted to stealing their own files from the medbay out of dread. And got caught swearing afterward, finding that files they'd just gone through the smelter to swipe were nothing but pithy commentary on how badly they abused Ratchet's repair kit after missions. Ratchet's tools remained untroubled there-after, as Jazz, Prowl, Red Alert, _and_ Optimus Prime all took turns putting them through the wringer over that bit of rule-breaking. The Medical Privacy Act was important to a _lot_ of Autobots, especially within such a small community as the _Ark_.

(2)Jazz had been heard to say in a rare, plaintive tone of voice that it'd be a lot funnier if they both weren't dead serious about the whole thing. As it was, the rest of the Ark could tell how badly a meeting had gone by how unsettled the officers were afterward. Ratchet had the uncanny ability to counter security concerns with moral puzzles that left even Prime squirming in his seat.

(3)It involved wing flaps, a welding torch, Shockwave's tower roof, and a soup can. A _full_ soup can. There had been a frantic scramble to remember whose berth was whose in the dead silence that followed that threat.

(4)Sand. As if he didn't have enough to worry about, Cybertron got invaded by hostile sand. Suddenly Ratchet had a planet full of patients and two entire factions staring at him like he could heroically pull a cure out of his aft. It was a wonder he hadn't snapped before this!


	5. Talking Out Problems

_Come play in the sand box_. (Astrotrain doesn't want to talk about it.)

* * *

><p><strong>Title: <strong>Talking Out Problems

**Warnings: "**I like big guns, and I cannot lie, you other 'Cons can't deny, that when a 'Bot walks in - just an itty bitty gunner - and a giant thing in your face, you get sprung!"

**Rating: ** G

**Continuity:** G1, _Footnotes_ AU

**Characters: **Astrotrain, Bluestreak

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **"_Our last defense"_

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

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><p>"That," Astrotrain said, disgust layered flat and heavy over the words, "is our last defense." The normal resonance had disappeared from his deep voice, echoes from the large open compartments near his vocalizer canceled out by sheer disbelief. "This is the best sharpshooter available?" Blast Off didn't deign to answer, having long since decided the whole fragging situation was too undignified for acknowledgement(1).<p>

Blitzwing had no such problem. "Does he ever shut up long enough to shoot?"

That carried quite nicely across the landing field. The group of Autobots gathered around Bluestreak turned as one mech to glare at in the triple-changers' direction, but Bluestreak wilted a bit. He did not, Astrotrain noticed, stop talking, although his voice lowered to a soft murmur that could no longer be heard from all the way across the tarmac.

Blast Off reached over and smacked Blitzwing upside the head, "Hey! What the fr—" before Astrotrain had the chance, which didn't stop the other Decepticon from waiting a second and _then_ smacking him. "Ow!" The stupid afthead cringed, reflexively covering his helm in defense against more hitting. They hadn't exactly been gentle smacks. "What was **that** for?"

"Shut up before Megatron lets Prime at us again!" Astrotrain hissed as Blast off rumbled, "I'd prefer my epitaph to be something more exciting than Death by Lecture."

Skyfire tiredly inserted himself into the cluster of Decepticon shuttles before yet another fight could start. Even Blitzwing's snarl cut off, and the three heavy hitters parted before the gentle scientist like butter under a hot knife. Nobody, but nobody, messed with Skyfire.

For one thing, for the extent of the truce the Constructicons had declared him a minor god of their personal pantheon. That meant that if any Decepticon laid so much as a dirty look on the big white shuttle, the build team would lay a combiner team smackdown on said foolish Decepticon. That alone would be enough to ensure the Decepticons behaved around Skyfire during the truce, but then one had to consider Starscream. One always had to consider Starscream, if only to have mercy on pained audios.

Nothing had been said, because that would be far too straightforward for the conniving Air Commander. But, well…Starscream got touchy where Skyfire was concerned. And by 'touchy,' that really meant that Seeker had practically hung a neon sign of _Hands Off!_ around the poor shuttle's neck.

Firing on Skyfire during battle was one thing. Everybody fired on everybody during battle, including commanders, best friends, and minor gods of any pantheon of choice. The truce had, nonetheless, put the Decepticons in the unanticipated scenario of peacefully dealing with their Air Commander's ex-somethingorother(2). This had proven to be a…difficult…situation for everyone involved. Starscream remained perfectly willing to shout abuse across the room, verbally backstab, and tear apart any and all theories put forth by the shuttle. Forcing him - unarmed, because nobody was that stupid - into a laboratory with the gentle giant had produced surprising results, however.

Everybody had expected an emergency call from Skyfire within two minutes of the door locking. They'd expected injuries, possibly an exploded audio receiver or two. What nobody had expected was a desperately flustered Air Commander mentally vomiting a set of weapons designs(3) up just to _get away_. Then Skyfire had done very interesting things to those designs, and the collected Autobot and Decepticon scientists had sent out retrieval teams to drag Starscream back by a leg if necessary to repeat the process.

Skywarp had discretely told the Decepticons as a whole to stay the frag away from those two. His considered opinion was that they were going to spontaneously combust any minute now. He'd been personally ordered to report to Megatron on the situation, as the Decepticon commander had no intention of touching his Air Commander's affairs any more closely than secondhand. Optimus Prime had returned from attempting a friendly chat with Skyfire looking like the pacifist scientist had torn strips off his armor with no more than a few profoundly, searingly polite words. Megatron wasn't going to risk Starscream setting off something thermonuclear just to avoid ever, _ever_ talking about his history with the now-Autobot shuttle again.

All of which led to Skyfire standing like some kind of buffer in the middle of a trio of Decepticon powerhouses, wearing a tired expression full of no little exasperation but absolutely no fear. He didn't precisely know _why_ the Decepticons avoided even looking in his direction, but he wasn't above using that to keep the cease-fire going.

The Decepticon shuttles suddenly found other things to do. Things that were…somewhere a good distance from where Skyfire now stood. They meandered away, trying not to look like they were getting out of range of an explosion.

In Astrotrain's case, he stalked across the landing field to stand with Dirge and Thrust. The two Coneheads looked terminally bored. He couldn't blame them. The Autobot build team had installed power generators on all the Decepticon jets' wings earlier, and now they were completing a preflight check. But these were the two Autobots with the blinding optimism and chunky builds(4) and they were as boring as monitor duty. All they ever talked about was what they'd done before the war, their hopes for the end of the war, and their disappointment that it had come to war. Standing around listening to them talk was mind-numbing.

Megatron had specifically issued an order not to mentally scar any of the innocent little Autobot twits that had emerged from the Ark's laboratories, no matter how inane and stupid the Decepticons found them. That mostly resulted in the Decepticon flyers standing around in bored silence as the scientists chattered like manic monkeys about the dullest topics. Planning out in detail how to exterminate the morons once the cease-fire was over had only taken up so much time.

But, one thing to be said for scientists: they had no concept of censorship. Maybe Prime kept these fools in the laboratory because they couldn't keep their mouths shut. Good for Decepticons looking for information, but not all that useful on the battlefield. Which tied into why exactly Astrotrain had come over to socialize with the morons.

He stood behind Dirge and loomed as nonthreateningly as he could over the Autobot currently working on the jet. "Can that 'bot actually shoot?" he asked when there was a pause in the nonstop inane blather. Idiot #1 glanced up at him, and he casually gestured at the knot of Autobots fussing around the blabbermouth. He'd been watching. The little gray Autobot hadn't shut up once.

Idiot #1 frowned at him. "Of course. Bluestreak has the highest rating on the firing range of any of us."

"Right," Dirge drawled. "He distracts everyone else from aiming with the chatter." The Autobot's attempt at a withering glare bounced off him without effect. "Is anyone even listening to him?"

A slightly guilty look replaced the glare. This, unlike the paltry glare, zeroed the Decepticon's attention in on him like a targeting laser: _Autobot weakness — alert, alert!_ "…not really. You, uh, learn to tune him out. Background noise, you know?" He fiddled with the power generator under Dirge's wing, lapsing into embarrassed concentration on his job.

A confuzzled look was passed among the three Decepticons. No, they didn't know. If any Decepticon had babbled like that, the others would have beaten him into silence. The two Decepticons eyed Bluestreak again, watching the way he never even paused between topics and skipped apparently at random into whatever passed through his processor. Dirge shot Astrotrain a pitying look. With a hefty dose of smugness added in, of course, because all the jets had to do was get the power generators on their wings within range of the S.O.A. gun(5). Astrotrain, on the other hand, had to actually carry Bluestreak within his hold. The Autobot would be the one firing the gun that would supposedly save them all.

Non-stop babbling in the middle of a firefight, with Cybertron and their lives on the line.

_Do I have to?_ Astrotrain nearly whined. But, no. He had more dignity than that. Most of the time. Although if he ended up getting cemented with alien sand(6) and dying with that dumb Autobot still babbling inside him, he hoped no one else survived to know. That was Cybertron's last defense? _That?_

"We're doomed," Dirge said for him.

Across the landing field, Bluestreak jogged out of the crowd of Autobots. He flashed a bright grin full of hope and idealism toward them, and — and —

Oh.

"That's a really big gun," Dirge said, sounding mildly surprised. That was like blood in the water for a Sharkicon to the other Decepticons. Heads turned all around the landing field.

_Oh._

The little gray 'bot wielded the cannon as if he'd been built with it in his arms, like anyone else carrying that gun would look an oaf and a fool. His hands were perfectly placed along the stock and barrel, and the butt nestled against his shoulder like a lover. It looked like a third transformation, but oversized and radiating untold power. The thrum of energy connections visibly shivered the air between it and the generators carried every jet on the landing field sported. Conversations cut off mid-word as the power swelled, pulsing on their plating with noticeable pressure. The Aerialbots looked startled. The Decepticons looked envious. Blast Off pointedly turned his back.

Astrotrain couldn't look away. In the course of the war, he'd seen mechs with weaponry sticking out of every orifice imaginable. He'd even seen them use the things. But never had he seen something so natural as the tiny little gunner carrying that gun toward him.

The Autobot's mouth was still moving. He appeared to be talking to the gun.

Astrotrain suddenly found himself profoundly interested in what exactly Bluestreak had to say.

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

**Footnotes**

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

><p>(1)This followed in the fine, upper class tradition of <em>Ignore it, and it will go away.<em> He had been assigned Mirage as point-shooter during the defense flight against _Nope, still ignoring it_, and they had bonded over not saying a single thing about what they were actually doing. They'd each found the other's manners to be impeccable, if snobbish, and spent the entire time Mirage was in Blast Off's hold speaking of trivial things with glacial politeness.

(2)Nobody knew, and the two main players in this particular drama weren't talking. Curiosity would kill someone yet.

(3)The Constructicons had begun eying the Air Commander in a distinctly acquisitive way after seeing the weaponry. It all seemed to be based off the basic components of his null rays, weapons that had fascinated war buffs for 10 million years. Everyone knew that the jet had made his own null rays, but nobody had ever stopped to think that maybe he'd continued making shiny, lethal, pretty guns afterward. Oh, the possibilities…

(4)Grapple and Hoist, not that it mattered to any of the Decepticons. They had dubbed the entire Autobot team sent to Cybertron as Idiots #1-6. Then Skyfire became 'Skyfire' because Starscream started twitching alarmingly whenever someone referred to the shuttle as Idiot #3. Then there had been that incident with the Autobot medic having some kind of mental snap and scaring the thrusters off all the jets, whereupon he'd been given the honorary Decepticon title of 'Run away!' That left the microscope, who could cow even Hook into silence with big words, and the trio of builders. The lone builder complained so much nobody but Long Haul could stand him. The other two were just plain boring. The crazy Autobot engineer had - thank _Primus_ - been left on Earth.

(5)The group of engineers, architects, scientists, and surgeons that had finalized its design had titled it a name rich in meaning and syllables alike, with a few additionally useless letters thrown in for luck. Starscream had helpfully translated this name into "Saving Our Afts" for the other flyers, who didn't care about the political ramifications behind the factions cooperating in a joint effort at saving the planet. They'd just wanted to know if the Primus-fragged thing would work.

(6)Alien, killer, parasitic sand that had immobilized and possibly murdered half of Cybertron at this point. The medics were working frantically on a cure while the rest of the Autobots and Decepticons fought off the invasion. The Constructicons hadn't even tried to explain. Idiot #4 had been confused when the flyers fled in fear from the huge words he insisted on trying to use to explain. Starscream had interrupted Skyfire's patient explanation — at that point, it'd been the fourth repetition, using different words that still made no sense — to sum it up for them: "It's sand. It will kill us all. **Now stop bothering us before I kill you first!**" Even the Autobot flyer gestalt agreed those were the kind of science-y words they understood.


	6. Molest My Ride

_Come play in the sand box_. (Skywarp hits on Optimus Prime. Badly.)

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><p><strong>Title: <strong>Molest My Ride

**Warnings: **Skywarp being kinky.

**Rating: ** PG

**Continuity: **G1, _Footnotes_ AU

**Characters: **Skywarp/Optimus Prime

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_"Skywarp/Optimus Prime. __Skywarp failing terribly at flirting; a bit of a divide between what 'Warp might find acceptable and what just-about-any-Autobot might find acceptable." _

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

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><p>Everyone has a kink.<p>

It doesn't matter how vanilla an act is; vanilla is still a _spice_. Besides, taste standards vary depending on situation and culture. Vanilla among the Decepticons could be as tame as pinning Starscream against a bulkhead and kissing him senseless(1), or as voyeuristic as getting off while watching Starscream beat the living slag out of his assaulter(2). The Autobots would probably faint in shock over what the Decepticons considered normal behavior, in or out of the berth. Kinks were an everyday sport, not something to be ashamed of(3).

Take Skywarp, for instance. In fact, taking him was his kink. Skywarp had a thing for transportation.

Skywarp, at spark, was a physically lazy 'bot. He loathed walking. It was slow, and his thrusters weren't made for it. He'd fly, but he preferred to teleport wherever he had to go. Spending a long time in transit under his own power meant he couldn't do other things. Flying required too much of his attention, meaning he could only concentrate on two or three things at once instead of the five or six things usually required to keep him sufficiently distracted. Transit flight time _itched_. He loved to stunt fly, and fighting tweaked him, but flying from Point A to Point B? Boring. It limited his ability to think without any real result.

Teleporting consumed his peripheral thoughts with calculations, projection models, and short-term planning. He whipped through null space with a gleeful focus the Autobots never seemed to remember once combat stopped. It wasn't that Skywarp was dumb. He wasn't a genius, either. He had average intelligence, overall. He just had a processor that worked at right angles to most Cybertronians' thought processes. He didn't think so much as calculate. Shockwave stole him whenever possible for work on the spacebridge. Hook sent him out to build sites to do estimations and analysis on geography and construction progress.

His warpnode took up a good chunk of his processing power when engaged. When not engaged, however, he had an excess of empty turnover space inside his head. Six or seven trains of thought could cross his mind at once, and only his wingmates could interpret the erratic way he spoke and acted when those thoughts hit terminal velocity. Average intelligence plus parallel processing capability left him hyperactive and prone to stupid pranks when thoughts jumped past his primary filters and straight into action. It gave him a reputation of idiocy, but there were worse things than being underestimated in the army. That was how he preferred it.

So, limiting himself by diverting thought to flight without reward? Ugh. Hitching a ride with others? Much better. It let him think unimpeded. In fact, it was so much better that Skywarp had developed more than a bit of…appreciation for his rides. It was something about the feel of physical movement without all the tiny, nitpicky, time-consuming details of actual thought on his part. He liked it. He _really_ liked it.

He'd never really thought much beyond that point until crashlanding on Earth. Sure, there had been a few wistful ideas, maybe a prank or two out of misplaced energy, but Skywarp had pretty much stayed out of trouble. Until Earth. They'd all been trapped in the close confines of an underwater base, slowly going crazy and climbing the walls, and then came the announcement of the Constructicons' version of a mental health policy. It took a couple weeks for the Decepticons to adjust to airing their plans to whatever Constructicon was closest(4), and there had been the time Skywarp flopped into LongHaul's truckbed for a free ride back to the buildsite, and, well…

Put it this way: Astrotrain never willingly took passengers — but he made an exception for Skywarp after that.

Thereafter followed a few years on Earth, hitting on Astrotrain and Blitzwing, and sometimes trading ride-for-ride with LongHaul. He'd been gradually nudging Thundercracker into letting him try jet-surfing. Skywarp had been honing what he liked into a fine fetish, and it'd been _nice_.

Then had come Shockwave's urgent warning about an invasion of sand(5) back on Cybertron, and one way or another, Skywarp had ended up in Optimus Prime's trailer.

He'd been hurt. Like, _oh Primus kill me please_ hurt. The undersides of his wings had been so much melted armor even before his out-of-control landing had pulverized them, and the motor control in his legs had been feeble at best. There had been a side order of agony to go with the main smorgasbord of pain. He'd been screaming from the pain when he'd crashed. That meant he'd have to submit to the tender mercies of 'Run away!'(6), who was scary enough to make him cower in a berth. Anticipating that should have left him resentfully sulking along with whimpering with pain.

Instead, Skywarp was a bouncy bundle of giddiness. The Prime had come to retrieve him from the crash site prepped with the Good Stuff. He didn't even know what it was the Autobot leader had injected into his fuel lines. All he knew was that it felt like little bubbles of joy in his head. It didn't make the pain hurt less, but it made him too happy to care.

The other thing was, of course, that he was inside another mech. Movement without effort. Oooooh, yeah.

He lay in Prime's trailer and smiled with glazed bliss at the ceiling. His slagged wings were wedged at an awkward angle, too wide for the trailer, and if he reached up, he'd probably be able to touch the top of the trailer. It was a box. He didn't like being confined on the best of days, and this was like an internment casket. But oddly, Skywarp found he didn't mind at all. The trailer was moving, rocking from side to side as grounder shocks cushioned the rough metal of Cybertron's surface. He didn't have to walk, and he didn't have to fly all the way back to Shockwave's tower. Claustrophobia melted against how _nice_ it was.

Skywarp reached one hand up, managing to scrape a finger across the ceiling. A living mech's field shimmered across his; not dead metal, but real Cybertronian armor and systems. Tiny repair systems entwined with circuitry and wires, the occasional cable pulsing energy or a tube with processed energon circulating. All of it alive, the antithesis to a prison. He was inside a living mech, his favorite place to be. He was surrounded by a miniature piece of Cybertron at its most alive, transmitting familiar power signatures from all angles. _Nice_.

His head slid to one side, coming to rest against his air intakes, and his vision briefly spun. His arm wavered. His fingers lost contact until they fell against the side of the trailer. There was a seam there. He rubbed it, enjoying the distant sensation through the burn of pain. That was more like it.

A sound like a cough reverberated around him, and surround-sound Prime was _nice_, too. He'd never noticed Prime's voice before. Sort of how he'd never been into Astrotrain's looks before, well, getting into him. "Skywarp?" Prime asked. "Do you need me to stop?"

Stop? Why on Cybertron would he want him to stop? Skywarp never wanted his partners to stop. Part of the fun was being in motion. "No, this is fine," he said back somewhat dreamily.

More than fine, really, because he'd never tried anything with an enclosed grounder before. Longhaul had that open truckbed, which was fine, but being totally encased was even better. Why had Skywarp never tried this before? Even if the trailer wasn't directly connected to Prime's main systems, there was nothing to beat the sensation of being enveloped in another mech. The feel of tires on ground and the sense of motion that came with it was shiver-worthy. _Nice_.

His fingers traced the seam, idly seeking a response. The trailer had to have a connection to Prime, or he wouldn't' be able to monitor it. Skywarp just had to find out how much of a connection there was. Challenge: get his ride revved up. Mmm. Skywarp's kind of challenge. Astrotrain had tried to be all stoic and dismissive the first time, but his cargo hold had oddball bits of instrumentation it had taken Skywarp 40 breems to find. He'd mauled the sensors a fingerlength at a time, patiently fondling and licking and digging curious fingers into things until the shuttle hadn't been able to hold onto the attitude any longer.

He'd walked away the victor, as Astrotrain had landed in a steaming heap after that particular ride. Optimus Prime? Bigger challenge yet.

Besides, when would he ever have this chance again?

Pushing aside the pain, Skywarp diverted all his considerable processing threads to the test. The Good Stuff pumping through his systems made it hard to concentrate, but he wanted to. Oh, did he want to. His other arm moved, shaking a bit with the effort, and he scooted himself further into the trailer. One of his optics was cracked, but that left one optic in working order. He looked for a hot spots.

"Skywarp."

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing?"

Was there just the slightest hitch to Prime's voice? Skywarp hoped so. "Keeping myself amused." His fingers picked cleverly at a seam, not trying to pry it open so much as tapping at the delicate webs of wiring at that juncture. "I get bored easily."

"We will be at the tower in less than a breem. Please be patient."

He hummed acknowledgement and didn't stop picking, hands crawling across the floor now. The wheels were down here. He could feel them rolling under his palms. There had to be more sensors to access, or at least some cables connecting the axles to Prime's main body. In fact, there had to be some heavy-duty connectors to secure cab to trailer hitch up at the head of the trailer. Humming broke into muted cackling, and Skywarp deliberately scraped his wings on the sides of the trailer as he felt his way forward.

Prime definitely sounded wary this time. Also, just a tiny bit strained. The _nice_ kind of strained. "Skywarp, it will be easier to take you out if you remain near my trailer doors."

Skywarp paused. "Take me out?"

"We're almost to the tower. Ratchet is standing by for repairs."

'Run away!' was waiting? All the more reason to stay inside Prime. "Make me."

A blank pause. "…what?"

Skywarp snickered and resumed his slow, rasping progress toward the head of the trailer. "I said, make me get out."

"I…" Prime seemed speechless. That was an accomplishment all by itself, although usually Skywarp liked to achieve these type of victories the, ah, hard way. Maybe he'd manage it again later under better circumstances. He was, after all, _in_ the ideal circumstance. Skywarp shivered and grinned. Prime seemed like the resilient type. He'd recover soon enough.

He seemed like a fairly vanilla type, too. Skywarp was looking forward to finding out what kind of kink that hid.

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><p><strong>[* * * * *]<strong>

**Footnotes**

**[* * * * *]**

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><p>(1)Megatron. Theory went that he'd run out of other ideas for shutting his Air Commander up.<p>

(2)Also Megatron, making it the one and only time Starscream physically attacked Megatron and won. Even Soundwave had apparently felt it would be…impolite to intervene. The Constructicons had hemmed and hawed when Megatron woke up in the repair bay later and demanded to know what had happened. He'd suffered memory reset. Since Starscream had immediately stormed offbase in a furious huff, the other Decepticons lied their afts off about the whole incident. Nobody wanted to explain to the Supreme Commander of the Decepticons that his Second in Command could kick his skidplate in when inspired by inappropriate touches. Also, it'd been the hottest thing to happen on the command bridge since Laserbeak played the three-on-two Reflector/Frenzy/Rumble film on the mainscreen. They kind of wanted to see if it'd ever happen again.

(3)Part of this could be traced back to the Constructicons' open-door policy on sexually deviant behavior. Hook considered the mental health of the Decepticons to be his personal domain, and sexual activity seemed better than beating each other up out of frustration. Open dialogue and practice of said activity was much healthier overall than fights. The other Constructicons tended to agree, but their addition to the policy tagged on that they would repair anything so long as they were briefed on it first. It made for interesting medical consultations. Some days, there was a line.

(4)Honestly, it'd become something of a open competition. _Who Can Scandalize Scrapper?_ became the Decepticons' favorite game for about four weeks straight. Scavenger could be trusted to find something to try next for the bored, Mixmaster sold enhancers to the interested, and Bonecrusher and LongHaul were fair game for the daring, but Hook was untouchable. Scrapper just never changed expression when the newest perversion got blurted out. It was a challenge. What could they say to make him break composure? The Decepticons liked challenges.

(5)Breakdown had developed an entire philosophy based off of the stupid slag that kept happening since they'd woken up on Earth. He called it Script Writer Metaphysics. It fit into his overarching theory that they were being watched. The basica philosophy was that someone out there was scripting everything that happened, like one of the human television shows. Sometimes, especially when sentient sand invaded, Skywarp bought into that philosophy. What, no, seriously? Sand?

(6)Ratchet had gotten a reputation in the short time the Decepticon jets had been under his care. The weird thing was that the more respectfully they treated him, the grumpier he seemed to get. Skywarp didn't understand it. Hook would kill for the ability to verbally thrash his patients into utter obedience, and the Autobot medic didn't seem to appreciate his own talent for it.


	7. Impractical Results

_Come play in the sandbox._ (Wheeljack is a Constructicon fetish.)

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><p><strong>Title: <strong>Impractical Results

**Warnings: **The stuff of fantasies sometimes includes explosions.

**Rating: ** PG

**Continuity: **G1, _Footnotes_ AU

**Characters: **Swindle, Constructicons, Thundercracker

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **Stormcloud GIF

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><p>[* * * * *]<p>

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><p>When the Constructicons moved like that, intent concentration written in vivid letters across their faces and violence ready to be written by their twitching hands, a wise Decepticon tyrant sent them far, far away. As in, 'back to Earth while he stayed on Cybertron' far away. "Get out of my sight!" was Megatron-speak for, "Will you just <strong>go away?<strong> Primus, you're freaking me out."

The Decepticons knew this because Starscream handily translated for them. Plus, they were all thinking it, too.

The combiner team descended on Shockwave's damaged space bridge with the kind of grim determination that rebuilt cities or stopped a marauding swarm of alien sand(1). The Autobot scientists scurried out their way and watched from a distance, not having a clue what was going on. They lacked a translator for what was going on, as Starscream wasn't one for helping Autobots with Megatron's linguistic oddities or explaining the Constructicons' weird fixations. All tentative queries and offers to help were soundly ignored. The Constructicons had better things to do than tolerate soft little Autobots any longer. Invasion of the killer sand, yes yes, moving on.

More important things were happening back on Earth. The Constructicons knew it. Megatron had gone so far as to ban them from communicating with Swindle when the warlord found out what half his build team was distracted with, but not before they'd found out that the experiment was a go. Swindle had gotten Blast Off to slip them an additional tidbit of teasing information after that: Thundercracker was being prepped for launch.

Prepped. As in, the control flight had been scheduled and gone smoothly. All the pre-flight maintenance had been double-checked and given a green light. The next step would be the actual test flight. The boosters would be installed and checklisted for flight. The clever black hands that had built them would delve deep into the Seeker's thrusters and make connections with meticulous attention paid to subject and device alike.

Swindle had promised to report it in ever delicious detail.

Mixmaster's engine hadn't slowed since. Neither had Hook's, much to his embarrassment. Scavenger walked into a wall. Bonecrusher went straight through it and fell off the building. Scrapper made a basic calculation error in the blueprint design for the weapon the scientists had manufactured to defend Cybertron. Long Haul ran over one of the Aerialbots(2).

The idea of Wheeljack wrist-deep in something experimental and possibly explosive had the Constructicons a bit…excited.

So they piled into the space bridge with all the dignity they had left, and it really didn't survive the trip back to Earth. But, meh. Dignity, shmignity.

Someone had kindly left a holovid sitting outside the Earth exit of the space bridge. Scrapper caused a pile-up when he spotted it, freezing where he stood. He only stumbled aside when Bonecrusher strong-armed him out of the way. That just cleared the view for the other five Constructicons, who blinked in fascinated unison as the holovid cycled through the very short, very _dramatic_ video.

_BOOM __**Crash**_ Flash_ Crackle!_

"Ooooooh," they breathed.

"Swindle," Scrapper barked into the Earth comm. network. "Where?"

"At the base," the Combaticon responded immediately.

"Is Thundercracker there?"

"What's left of him." Swindle's smile could almost be seen. "He's not too bad off. Wheeljack spent **hours** putting him back together."

Scavenger made a soft sound resembling a moan somewhere behind him, but frankly, most of Scrapper's processing power had just been diverted to imagining that. Repair work. Hours of repairwork by a mad inventor who could engineer that kind of explosion. Their optics went right back to that holovid as it cycled again. Hours. _Guh._

Hook dropped into the network with a graceless clunk before Scrapper got back up to speed. "Swindle."

"Yeah?"

"**Details.**"

"Sure. Do you want me to start with how the experiment went, how many tools the Autobot brought with him to check Thundercracker's systems pre-flight, or the precise time it took him to calibrate the fuel injectors on the boosters? I timed him to a fraction of a second for you if you're interested."

"…muh."

On the other end of the comm. line, Swindle listened to the strangled noise, threw his head back, and laughed his aft off. Thundercracker lit one optic dimly, moodily shoved the Combaticon's feet off his repair berth, and heaved over to lay on his other side. It only made Swindle laugh harder.

And on the other side of the planet in another faction altogether, Wheeljack happily went over the results of his experiment. He absently wondered if anyone would be interested in double-checking his work.

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><p>[* * * * *]<p>

**Footnotes**

[* * * * *]

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><p>(1)Seriously. <em>Sand<em>. Because at least once or twice during the worst of the fighting, every single one of the flyers — who, for the most part, lacked the code to process the technical jargon that explained things better - had stopped and seriously reevaluated the situation. Giant slagging war machine robots were losing a planetary battle to invading parasitic _sand_. Ratchet had made the Aerialbots all go have a lie-down. Starscream had picked a fight with Megatron just to give the Decepticons some perspective on things. Sand? It'd been too much.

(2)No, really, it'd actually been an accident. He even apologized. Fireflight had been so taken aback by that he didn't tell the other Autobots how he got tire tracks on his face.


End file.
